Dusk till Dawn hike

Veteran (100+ posts)

At our Guide meeting last night Flossie asked if we could do a dusk till dawn hike . I am well up for this but have absolutely no idea what it would involve. Pretty sure it would involve bacon butties somewhere though.

Does anyone have any experience of organising or taking part in a dusk till dawn hike ?

Veteran (100+ posts)

I've not done a dusk till dawn hike specifically but I have done a dawn walk and a couple of overnight incident hikes with Girlguiding, and a couple of overnight walks outside.

You could do it as close as possible to the longest day, and finish at a site where you can catch a couple of hours sleep - if you do this, I'd be tempted to either see if you could organise a support team to pitch tents and put out beds for you, or book indoor accommodation and again get beds set up ready for you. This would be more expensive, but you wouldn't have to ask parents to come out at an ungodly hour, and there would be a chance of getting at least a little sleep.

Or you could do it reasonably soon and make it more of a dawn walk - have a sleepover, wake up around 5, finish somewhere where you can cook your breakfast around 9 or 10.

A full overnight walk with no sleep is really good fun but in my experience it does pretty much wipe out the following day and you still feel it for a day or two after that (or maybe I'm just getting old!).

Terrain is important - aim for slightly easier walking than you might in the day. Navigation is much trickier at night, too.

Depending on the length and difficulty of your walk, it is the one time I would suggest really high-energy, sugary snacks - a Snickers at 3 am provides a real boost.

Veteran (100+ posts)

Thanks for your reply Willow. I spoke to the girls this week and they are very keen.

We are fortunate in that we're in a very rural location with tones of public footpaths & bridleways so the aim is to leave and return to our usual meeting place in a circular route.

We can leave beds/ sleeping bags set up ready for our return.

The plan is indeed to do it on 25th June and hope to choose a special spot of sunrise. Then back to the HQ to crash out for few hours, followed by bacon butties.

I am prepared to be shattered- but it can't be any more exhausting than the first overnight camp I ran 2 years ago with nine 12year old guides who had never camped before. Put it this way - it was lively!! The thought if walking all night sounds positively relaxing in comparison.